Synopses & Reviews
It is widely held in contemporary moral philosophy that moral agency must be explained in terms of some more basic account of human nature. This book presents a fundamental challenge to this view. Specifically, it argues that sympathy, understood as an immediate and unthinking response to another's suffering, plays a constitutive role in our conception of what it is to be human, and specifically in that conception of human life on which anything we might call a moral life depends.
Synopsis
Includes bibliographical references (p. 149-152) and index.
About the Author
Craig Taylor is Research Fellow at the University of Sydney, Australia.
Table of Contents
Sympathy * Rational Altruism * Character * Moral Incapacity * An Attitude Towards a Soul * Sympathy and Other Primitive Responses * Sympathy and Understanding * Appendix: A Utilitarian Theory?